THE West African Examination Council (WAEC) has deplored the aberrant practice where schools present students to be examined in subjects they do not have existing teachers, or functional laboratories and equipment. Consequently, it has governments at differently level to halt the practice.

It has also implored state governments to take seriously, the issue of teacher training as it called on more State governments to take advantage of the training of secondary school teachers by the council as have been done by Lagos State and Federal Capital Territory, in order to improve the performance of students in WAEC examinations.

These formed part of a communiqué issued resolutions at the end of the 60th meeting of the Nigeria Examinations Committee (NEC) of the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), which was held last week in Lagos.
The Committee, which meets twice a year, to consider matters related to the conduct of the May/June and November/December West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE), is the highest decision-making organ of WAEC on examination-related matters in the country.
Its statutory chairman is the Director (Basic and Secondary Education), Federal Ministry of Education and chief federal government nominee on council.

Membership of the committee comprises four representatives each, of the state ministries of education; Department of Education, Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja; the All Nigeria Conference of Principals of Secondary Schools (ANCOPSS), and the Nigerian universities. It also includes the registrar to council, the head of national office (HNO); head of the Test Development Division (TDD) and the head of the Test Administration Division (TAD) of the council.

According to a communiqué from Public Affairs Department, and signed by Public Affairs Officer, Demianus Ojijeogu, the committee received a report on the Statistics of Entries and Results for the May/June 2015 WASSCE. It also received and considered the General Résumé of the Chief Examiners’ Reports on the May/June 2015 WASSCE, as well as reports on the activities of the Aptitude Tests Department (ATD), for the period May to October 2015; and on the activities of the Research Department of the Council, for the period April to October 2015.

Additionally, the committee received reports on Special, Irregularity and Clemency Cases on the November/December 2014 WASSCE as well as Irregularity Cases arising from the conduct of the May/June 2015 WASSCE.
The communiqué added that, “… during the meeting, the committee also noted the report on how students are being examined on subjects that have no existing teachers or functional laboratories and equipment and called on governments at various levels to address this anomaly.”

It continued, “The committee implored more state governments to take advantage of the training of secondary school teachers by the council as have been done by Lagos state and the FCT, Abuja in order to improve the performance of students in WAEC examinations.
“The Committee commended states that have put effective measures in place to forestall the registration of external candidates for the May/June WASSCE in order to prevent examination malpractice.
“In the course of considering the various reported cases of malpractice, the committee endorsed appropriate sanctions in all established cases of malpractice as prescribed by the rules and regulations governing the conduct of the council’s examinations after diligent deliberations.

It approved that the entire results of candidates involved in proven cases, which attract cancellation of entire results (CER) be cancelled, while subject results of those involved in proven cases, which attract cancellation of subject results (CSR), be similarly cancelled,” the document stated.

Beyond this, some candidates would also suffer other sanctions such as barring them from sitting for the council’s examinations for specified number of years, while some schools will be derecognised as examination centres for years, while some other schools would have their recognition as WAEC examination centres withdrawn.
“Also, indicted supervisors have been blacklisted while erring teachers and principals have been reported to their state ministries of education and ANCOPSS for disciplinary action. The decisions of the committee will be implemented without delay and the affected candidates would be duly informed by the council.